


spirals

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU, Ice Skating, M/M, Mental Illness, OCD, Recovery, figure skating, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21931021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In ice skating, a spiral is when you lift one leg up as high as you can behind you and tip your upper body forward, trying to keep your head to the horizon as you balance on a single edge.  Dan remembers doing spirals all the time, holding his breath as he worked to keep that balance, stretching his legs so he could lift them higher, higher, higher, higher, up and up and up and up towards the sky.  Despite everything, the tension of his foot as he balanced, the aches in his leg when he pushed it too high, the jump in his heart when he reached the precarious tipping point between the height of his leg and how low his torso was, when Dan did spirals he felt like he was flying.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 30
Kudos: 52
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2019





	spirals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [huphilpuffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/gifts).



> Hello from your secret Santa/snowflake! I hope you enjoy this fic! I hope you don’t mind the excessive commas or my use of this exchange to infodump about ice skating. :)
> 
> thanks to my beta Kay, for helping me with all the weird things i write when I’m half asleep.

Spirals are what Dan’s therapist calls it when he starts falling again, the spinning and spinning in tighter and tighter circles until you can’t see anything but the wind-up. Spirals are what his doctor calls it when Dan can’t see anything except everything wrong and can’t do anything but rituals. Spirals are what his friends call it when he stops hanging out with them, or talking to them, or responding to them, again, leaving the world to fall deeper and deeper into his messed-up head. Spirals are what everyone says when things start to go wrong again.

In ice skating, a spiral is when you lift one leg up as high as you can behind you and tip your upper body forward, trying to keep your head to the horizon as you balance on a single edge. Dan remembers doing spirals all the time, holding his breath as he worked to keep that balance, stretching his legs so he could lift them higher, higher, higher, higher, up and up and up and up towards the sky. Despite everything, the tension of his foot as he balanced, the aches in his leg when he pushed it too high, the jump in his heart when he reached the precarious tipping point between the height of his leg and how low his torso was, when Dan did spirals he felt like he was flying. His coach told him they were one of his best moves. He put spirals in every routine that he did. He did them backwards, and to get into other moves, and pretty much every other place he could put them. Flying was fun. Dan loved flying. Spirals let Dan soar and soar and soar, forever and ever and ever.

And then he fell. No bird can fly forever, after all. Dan had been stupid to think he could.

The real part, the physical actual falling, wasn’t that big of a deal. All he did was misjudge the tipping point, and bend just a bit too far forward so all his weight went on his toe pick instead of evenly about the skate. And then he stumbled, and then he fell, and then he stood up again. His ankle hurt when he stood, enough to make him wince and enough to make him leave the ice early that day, but Dan knew it was only a twist, at worst. Dan had injured himself far worse than that before. But when he started taking off his skates, untying the laces and drying off the blades, he could feel the beginnings of anxiety already settling in his stomach, eating up the usual giddiness he gets from skating. His hands shook, just slightly but still noticeable, as he stood up and started to walk away. When he got home that night, he locked the door 6 times. He hadn’t had to do that in ages.

Dan had been balancing for a long time, and just then he had started to fall.

———

Dan hasn’t ice skated in months now, not since that day. He can’t even explain why. Like most things to do with his brain, it doesn’t make much sense. All Dan knows is that if he skates, Bad Things will happen, which is stupid, because he used to skate all the time and nothing ever happened then. But Dan stays away anyway. Who is he not to listen to his mind?

His skates are still in his room, in their bag in the corner just like always. Dan feels like they’re mocking him every time he sees them, mocking him for not even being able to pick them up without spinning into a panic attack, for avoiding them, for leaving them in his room for months and months despite everything they make him feel. Dan hides from them, turning his head away, but at night his thoughts come back around to them, again and again and again, spiraling as long as he’s awake.

Every morning, he wakes up and washes his hands twice, and twists his watch twice around his wrist, and buttons each button on his shirt twice. He counts the steps to leave rooms, and makes sure to leave on an even number. He doesn’t know why. He just knows he has to. Dan shakes his head twice to clear it, left-right left-right. He hasn’t felt this bad in ages. But he still leaves the house every morning and walks to work. He doesn’t bike much anymore. He’s too afraid of dying.

At his therapy sessions, Dan’s never been very loud, but he hasn’t been as quiet as he is now in years. When his therapist tries to talk to him, leaning forward like every therapist in the movies does, he turns his head to the side, twisting his watch around his wrist, one and two and one and two. Dan knows his therapist has noticed him doing it. She’s tried to bring it up, nearly every session, but Dan evades her questioning.

“Dan,” she says today, after thirty minutes have passed with Dan barely saying anything. He feels kind of bad for her, with how much he ignores her. It must be awkward. “Dan, are you listening?”

“Yeah.” Dan twists his watch again, twice. He doesn’t look at her.

“I’ve noticed you keep twisting your watch,” she says, and Dan hears the shift of her papers as she leans forward. “Is it helping you?”

Dan shrugs. He looks at the floor. His therapist shifts her feet again. She’s wearing brown boots. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

More feet-shifting. “Maybe?”

“I just do it.”

“Is there a reason?”

Dan twists it again, and again. God. He fucking hates therapy these days. “If I don’t do it….” But he lets himself trail off before the end of the sentence. He knows his therapist would latch onto that if he said something like “and bad things will happen” or anything similar.

“If you don’t do it?” Her voice is gentle, but Dan’s shoulders tense anyways.

“I don’t know.”

It’s true. He doesn’t know. He just knows it’ll be Bad. And Dan’s brain really doesn’t like Bad.

“How long have you been doing this?”

Dan shrugs. Then he shrugs again. He knows his therapist noted that. “I’m not sure. A few months, maybe?” It’s a lie. Dan can pinpoint the exact week he started doing this again. It was the week after he fell, maybe a couple days later. He’d been falling since then, falling back into all the habits and obsessions and compulsions he thought he’d lost. This was one of them.

“Okay. Was there any reason you started, specifically?”

Dan’s eyes are still on the floor. His therapist has leaned back again by now, and is probably trying way too hard to smile right now, given how terrible of a patient he’s been. His hands prickle with nerves. He wants to wash them. He doesn’t want to lie straight up, not to his therapist, but he doesn’t want to talk about it either.

“Dan?”

Dan looks up. His therapist is looking at him in that serious-listening way people do, all concerned an anything. She smiles when she sees Dan’s face. He smiles back, awkwardly. “Uh,” he says. “Uh, it was about when I stopped skating.”

Dan doesn’t usually say he stopped skating. Usually he says something vague about “taking a break” or “concentrating on other things,” or avoids the subject altogether. It bothers him a bit, saying it so bluntly, putting it as firmly in the past as it is.

“We haven’t talked that much about your stopping skating. Do you want to talk about it now?”

No, Dan thinks. No, he really fucking doesn’t. “Sure,” he says out loud, and shrugs, because he’s an idiot. Now his therapist is looking at him expectantly, like he’s supposed to talk or something. Dan twists his watch again, and again. “I don’t know. I wanted to take a break, I guess.”

“Sometimes it’s good to take a break.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” Therapy always makes Dan feel awkward. He pauses, and his therapist pauses with him, giving him time to say what he wants. Dan really wants to say nothing, but the words are forming in his mind already, pushing themselves out. “I mean, I didn’t really want to stop,” he says. “I just did, I guess. I fell one day on the ice, and I was scared. That was weird — I’d never been scared of skating before. It was really weird, and I guess that made it scarier. So I stopped. Or something like that.” Dan shrugs. He tries to smile. His face feels twitchy. “I don’t know.”

“Are you still scared?”

Dan thinks of his skates, shoved in the corner of his room he can’t bear to look at anymore. He thinks of the towel he draped over their bag yesterday, which was supposed to make it better because he wouldn’t see them, but instead only made them more noticeable. He thinks of all the times his hands have shaken and he’s twisted his watch, twice, four times, six times, any even number.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I am.”

When he leaves therapy that day, it feels like a start.

———

It’s a month later, after his therapist has learned a lot more details about Dan’s life the last few months, and after he’s started reigning in his symptoms again, with the help of her and the new meds he’s on, that his therapist first suggests he goes back.

“You could try it,” she says. “You don’t even have to get on the ice. You could just watch.”

Dan shakes his head, and they don’t discuss it again.

A few weeks later she asks again. “Don’t let your fear hold you back from the things you love,” she tells him this time. “It’s alright if you’re not ready. I just want you to think about it.”

Dan thinks about it. The sight of his skates doesn’t scare him anymore, that is true, and every once in awhile, when he passes them in the corner of his room, he stops and remembers how it used to feel when he skated. It seems so foreign now, how he used to fly, and fly, and Dan thinks that maybe he would love to do that again. And then he remembers the fall, and all of his thoughts of flying fly straight out the window. 

Dan doesn’t touch his skates that week.

She brings it up the very next week. Dan supposes she thinks it’s important. He doesn’t really listen to her speech on why he should try it, but lets his mind imagine how it would be instead. The fact is, Dan misses skating. He misses the biting cold on his face and the swish of his skates when he goes fast. He misses doing jumps and spins and even fucking edgework. He misses it a whole fucking lot, if he’s being honest.

“Fine.” Dan’s throat feels suddenly drier. “I’ll try once.”

His therapist’s face breaks out into a smile. “That’s great,” she says. “Do you feel comfortable going alone, or do you want to find a friend to go with you?”

“I’ll go alone.”

She nods. “Alright. Stay safe, okay, and call me or someone you trust if you need help.”

“I know.”

When he leaves that session, Dan still feels the nerves in his stomach, and the prickling in his hands that make him want to wash them again, but there’s a bit of a bounce in his step as he walks home. He’s getting better, Dan thinks. It’s going to be okay.

———

Dan is going to go Saturday, he decides — a day he always used to skate on. It’ll be just like it used to be. He’ll have fun. He won’t worry.

He repeats that bit. He won’t worry, he won’t worry, he won’t worry, he won’t worry, thinking it more and more has Saturday draws closer and he worries more and more and more. On Friday evening, he has a panic attack. On Saturday, he stays home.

“I didn’t go,” he blurts out to his therapist the next week. “I freaked out, and I just couldn’t. I’m sorry,” Dan says quickly, though he’s not quite sure why. “I’m really sorry. I’m going to go this week.”

That therapy session doesn’t leave him quite as adrenaline-pumped as the last one. Dan doesn’t have the same bounciness walking home as he had last week, but he doesn’t have the same worries either. His head doesn’t feel quite so much like an echo chamber.

It’s Wednesday when he picks up his skating bag again. It feels the same as always when he shoves it up on his shoulder, heavy and awkward and always wanting to slide down his arm and rest at his elbow instead. It’s still so natural, holding it, his body leaning slightly to that side from its weight. It’s still so normal.

There aren’t many people at the rink when he gets there. That’s good. Dan isn’t sure he could handle many people. He shakes his hand nervously as he walks into the familiar lobby, back and forth and back and forth. The air is chilly in here, just like always, and Dan shivers. He resists the urge to shiver again.

His fingers are still shaking when he laces up his skates, looping them around and pulling until they’re tight around his ankles. He does it on pure instinct, still. Even after all these months. When he stands up, Dan can feel the edges under his feet when he tips them from side to side. It’s so different from how his feet usually feel, and yet so normal as well. Dan takes a deep breath. It’s too late for him to turn back now.

The moment Dan gets on the ice, he feels like he’s soaring. He doesn’t do anything interesting — he’s still too afraid for that — but even just plain strokes, just moving on the ice and feeling the cold rush past his face as he skates, makes him giddy. “Fuck,” Dan says. A woman sends him a look, and he gives her an awkward thumbs up. Fuck, this is so good.

He doesn’t stay on the ice for long. Dan’s ankles get tired quickly now, he realizes, and he forgot to bring any gloves, and after a few minutes, the fear starts to creep in again. So he awkwardly clambers off the ice after a bit, smiling like an idiot, practically freezing to death in his light jacket. He hums under his breath as he takes his skates off. Skating makes Dan feel so light.

“You looked like you were having fun.”

Dan looks up. A guy stands awkwardly in front of him, looking like he just got off the ice himself. He’s tall, with a dark brown quiff, and smiling brighter than Dan is now. Different from Dan, he has the air of smiling like that all the time.

“Oh,” Dan says. “I was.”

The guy nods, and sits down on the other end of the bench. He starts pulling his skates off. Dan resumes cleaning the ice off of his.

“I haven’t seen you here in awhile,” the guy says awkwardly. He clears his throat. “I mean, you used to come here a lot, right?”

Dan nods. He’s starting to lose his smile a bit, but at least this guy seems sincere. “I did, yeah.”

The guy nods. He’s kind of cute, if Dan’s being honest with himself. “You were really good. Your spins, and those things where you lifted your leg really high? Those were good.”

Dan giggles. Okay, so this guy is really cute. “Those things where I lifted my leg really high? You mean spirals?”

“Yeah!”

Dan smiles at him. “Thanks. I haven’t done one of those in awhile, though.”

“Well, you used to be good, at least.” The guy blinks. “Wait. That sounds like you’re not good now. Which you’re not. I mean, you’re not bad now. You’re still really good. I mean” — he laughs again, and Dan wants to grin even more than when he was on the ice today. He’s smiled more today than in all the months since the fall put together, he thinks. “Maybe I should just stop talking.”

“No,” Dan says. He shrugs. “I like your talking.” It feels reckless, saying that. Dan hasn’t done something reckless in a long time. It feels good. “I’m Dan,” he says, before he loses his nerve.

“Phil,” the guy — Phil — says. “And thanks! I like your talking too.” He laughs. Dan does too.

“That’s good. I’d hate to poison you with my voice or something.”

Phil shakes his head. “Dan! Your voice is the opposite of poison.” It feels like flirting when he says that. Dan can’t even remember the last time he flirted with someone he actually cared about.

“You’re sweet.”

“No, you,” Phil jabs back, poking Dan lightly on the shoulder. It feels even more like flirting now. Dan’s heart is beating out of control.

“I have to go,” Dan says when he stands up. Maybe it’s just his wistful imagination, but Phil seems sad. “But we should skate together sometime.”

“We should! I’ll give you my number so we can keep in touch.”

Dan’s heart almost stops when Phil hands him his phone, and Dan types his number in, making the contact “Dan :)”.

“Uh, here.”

Phil sees the contact and smiles. His hands are delicate as they hold his phone, despite how tall he is. “Thanks! We should talk soon, Dan!”

Dan nods. “We should.”

When he walks home that afternoon, the leaves are falling, spinning in spirals in the breeze, around and around and around. Dan catches one, bright red from a Japanese maple, then throws it back into the air and watches it drift back down. It spins as it falls, around and around and around.


End file.
